Chapter 433 - G

The school administration was likely to be gutted for allowing this travesty to happen on their watch, but that wasn't the Director's problem. If anyone in that cesspit who knew Hess' cape status had bothered to call the PRT, she'd have been dragged out of the school and thrown into juvie – or at the very least, kept from escalating her bullying to full-on attempted murder. The additional funding schools with a Ward attending received was partially meant to ensure they didn't let their power go to their head by making sure the faculty kept the proper authorities informed of their activities.

"There's one last thing," added Armsmaster. "During my investigation of the culprits' phones, I found messages on Shadow Stalker's device that made me suspicious that she'd broken the terms of her parole in other ways. Upon investigating her own locker, I found a number of crossbow bolts similar to the ones she was using before her arrest : ones meant to maim and kill instead of stun. She'd used her power to hide them, but my armor's systems were able to detect them. Several of them were stained with blood, although too old to run any DNA tests."

"So mentally torturing another teenager wasn't enough to satisfy her; she also had to go on unsanctioned patrols using lethal ammunition," Pigot sighed. "Thank you for the summary, Armsmaster. Do we have confirmation that the victim triggered ?"

"Not at the moment," said Armsmaster. "The hospital ran an MRI scan, and while her Corona Pollentia shows the potential for a trigger, we can't be certain until we question her when she wakes up and is in a state to undergo power testing."

"You saw the damage to the locker she broke out of, right ?" asked Miss Militia. "Did it look like something a normal teenager could do ?"

"It is unlikely," admitted Armsmaster. "But we shouldn't make any hasty conclusions, especially when it comes to potentially outing a new cape. From my observation of the scene, the locker had been packed full of various biological detritus, probably before the winter break, which wouldn't have been good for the metal. Additionally, in the time I spent in Winslow, I registered no less than twenty-seven violations of the safety codes for a school, and the lockers themselves were older than I am. It is possible that this was merely a case of hysterical strength."

Uh. Between this and how quickly Armsmaster had extracted the truth from Winslow's students, Piggot was fairly certain he'd been getting help from Dragon today. The situation was already complicated enough without outing a newly triggered cape, especially one who'd triggered because of the actions of one of their own Wards.

"Miss Hebert is still comatose at this time," Armsmaster finished. "The doctor I spoke to is optimistic she'll wake up within a few days. They've got her hooked up on IVs in the meantime. I have spoken with her father : he's understandably furious, but calmed down slightly when I explained to him that those responsible have been found and will be punished."

"Make sure both the hospital and her father know that the PRT will pay for all medical costs," said the Director to Deputy Renick. "And if they think it'll help, see if we can ask Panacea to check her out for complications."

Renick nodded, grim-faced, no doubt already running the numbers in his head to figure out where the money would come from. Their branch's budget was tight enough that they couldn't afford much in the way of niceties, but it was clear that this mess was going to cost them a lot, and getting some good will out of Mister Hebert early could only help them, especially if his daughter did turn out to have triggered.

Recruitment into the Wards would be a hard sell, but they could definitely use even a low-level Brute to bolster their numbers, if only to show the flag on the Boardwalk and keep people from panicking. And if the girl hadn't triggered, then giving something before they were legally obligated to do so by whatever hefty settlement the PRT lawyers would negotiate to keep things quiet could only help.

"Alright," said Piggot. "Now, let's talk about our response to this mess. To start with, Shadow Stalker is gone. The two accomplices can be processed by the police, or the nearest mental institute as the courts might decide. But Sophia Hess is a parahuman, and that makes her our business. Even if I could keep her somehow, I wouldn't want to : she has proven too much of a liability."

That was only partly because of her sadistic tendencies : if she limited those to acceptable targets (and God knew there were more than enough of those in the Bay), Piggot would've been willing to work with the girl. But, simply put, she'd shown that she was too stupid to be relied upon.

"We're going to need to send her to a detention center outside the city," said Miss Militia. "If we keep her close by, with the Empire …"

She didn't need to finish : they all knew what she was talking about. Sophia Hess would get shanked or lynched in any jail she had to share with members of the Empire, even without knowing her parahuman status.

"I know, and we will. Make no mistake," Piggot addressed everyone in the room. "This is a clusterfuck of massive proportions, and not just because of the PR hit this will give us. The Empire is all but guaranteed to act out in response once the news spread out. A black Ward bullying a white girl for months without anyone doing anything about it, culminating in a murder attempt ? The Nazi bastards are guaranteed to jump on it."

"Mister Hebert is the Head of Hiring of the DWU," said Armsmaster. "The dockworkers have fought hard to maintain their independence from the gangs, and are known to employ many people who find it difficult to find work elsewhere, due to their ethnicity or religion. Him being affiliated with the Empire, or even sympathetic with their ideology, seems unlikely."

"Well, that's very nice to hear, but it won't stop the Nazis from trying to use this to drum up support," Piggot all but snarled back before taking a deep breath and reining in her temper. "I want the remaining Wards to stay in the Rig for the foreseeable future : there's a chance they might be targeted by some of the Empire's stupidest members. Everyone else will need to be on high alert for increased gang activity."

She felt a twinge of satisfaction as the chorus of nods that met her proclamation. Everyone was taking this seriously, as they should. The situation in the Bay was a powder keg on a good day, with a rage dragon and the Third Reich hopefuls, to say nothing of the Merchants and the swathe of lesser gangs that regularly popped up only to be crushed or absorbed by the ABB or E88. Since she'd been assigned to this city, Piggot had done all she could to keep the whole thing from exploding, and she was damned if the spark which finally set it all ablaze was going to be one of her own god-damn Wards.

I drifted in the darkness. Here, there was no pain, no sound, only silent tranquillity.

For a while, I was content to simply exist; to enjoy the peace of the darkness, and rest. Then, I started to remember … things, that were not the darkness, and with them came an end to peace.

The memories were disjointed and vague, flashing in and out of my mind. I remembered a castle on an island, where the lords of the night came to pay homage to their sovereign. I remembered a city, and another built in the image of the first yet failing to equal its glory in any meaningful way.

I remembered the smile of my mother, and the sound of her voice. I remembered the noise of mocking laughter, and the touch of unkind hands.

I remembered shame, and rage, and grief, and pain, and above all loneliness. And with that recollection, the comfort of the darkness became suffocating, for I was alone in the dark, and I didn't want to be.

Though all around me was darkness, I could distinguish shades of black. I moved – though I had no feet – toward one of the spots that showed shapes I half-remembered, and passed out of the darkness and into the realm of light and matter, sound and fury.

AN : Yes, a new story. I know, I know, I said I wouldn't until I finish ACCWAMD. But the Muse ambushed me in a dark alley and smacked me in the head with the idea for this story, and I couldn't get it out of my head until I'd written over 10k words for it, at which point I bowed to the inevitable.

I have already written the outline of this story all the way to its conclusion, so you can rest easy that Leviathan, the dreaded Fic Killer, won't claim another victim here, as the metaphysics of the WoD give me a number of interesting storytelling options. That being said, given that I already have too many ongoing stories, I make no promises as to regular updates. I'm writing this to have fun with the setting, and also because dear Gods this is a depressing universe which somehow can only benefits from having elements from the frikking World of Darkness being added to it.

At the time of writing, I have two more chapters of this story finished, which will go up tomorrow and the day after, and two more in the works. After that, it will depend on the response from you the readers, and, of course, the Muse's whims.

I hope you enjoyed my first attempt at a Worm fanfic, and look forward to your thoughts and comments.

Zahariel out.

I emerged from the darkness, and found myself standing in an alleyway, surrounded by tall buildings. Ahead, I could see the light of a lamppost illuminating an empty street.

I looked up, and saw the night sky : an infinite expanse of darkness, pierced by tens of thousands of stars. Even with my field of view restricted by the buildings surrounding me, the sight was majestic, and I stood transfixed for an undetermined period of time before I managed to tear myself away.

I looked down at myself, and saw only strands of darkness, woven together into an approximation of a humanoid body. I frowned mentally, knowing that this was wrong, that I couldn't just walk around like this, though I didn't know why.

I glanced around for something to cover myself with. Across the street was a store, and though a heavy metal grid had been lowered before its windows, I could still see the mannequins inside. One of them was wearing a suit, and its faceless head seemed to stare directly at me.

My body shifted, and when I checked myself, I was now wearing a copy of the suit, albeit one made entirely of different shades of black. And, for some reason, I was holding a cane just like the mannequin had, though it was black too.

It would have to suffice. I stood on the threshold of the alleyway for a long moment, unsure what to do. This place felt familiar, but I couldn't remember anything concrete about it. I had been here before, I was sure of it, but I had no idea what it was called, or when or why I'd come before –

Then I heard someone scream. One word, full of panic, and quickly silenced by a grunt and the sound of something hitting flesh.

"HELP !"

My body was moving before I realized it. I ran, avoiding the spotlight of the street lamps on instinct, staying close to the shadows. The street around me blurred, until I stood before another alleyway, almost identical to the one I'd emerged in – except this one wasn't empty.

Three men were surrounding a woman, who was laying on the ground, clinging her torn clothes close to her body. She was bleeding from a split lip, and clearly terrified out of her mind.

All three men had bald heads, and displayed the image of some kind of weird cross either on their clothes or on their skin. The sight of it filled me with a cold fury, the first emotion I'd felt since waking up inside the darkness. Their faces were contorted into leering grimaces as they surrounded their prey, savoring her fear and all but salivating in anticipation of what they were planning to do.

I stalked into the alleyway, deliberately tapping my cane onto the ground with every step to draw their attention away from their victim.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The noise made the skinheads turn, and they flinched as they saw me.

"What the fuck ? What kind of freak are you ?" one of them shouted in my direction.

I stared at him. Whatever he saw when he looked at me caused him to gulp and take a step back, some of his bravado deserting him.

"You think you can fuck with us, just cause you're a cape ?" shouted another man. "We're Empire !"

On that, he pulled out a gun and shot me. I braced myself for the impact of bullets, but his aim must have been off, because I felt nothing.

The third charged me, knife in hand. I brought my hand up to ward him off, but when I touched his chest, he went flying and crashed against the wall. He slid down to the ground and remained there, twitching feebly.

"Shit," whispered the shooter, struggling to reload his weapon with trembling hands. "Shit, shit, shit !"

I walked forward and smashed the gun out of his hand with my cane, breaking his fingers in the process, before crushing the weapon underfoot. The noise of the metal being ground into the pavement filled the alleyway, causing the two remaining skinheads to wince.

Before they could do anything else, I punched the one who had been holding the gun in the gut, and he collapsed, wheezing. The third turned to run, but before he could get more than five steps, I suddenly was right in front of him, with no recollection of how I had gotten there. He stumbled and fell down trying to avoid me, and I smacked him in the back of his right knee with my cane.

There was a crunching noise, and he howled, grabbing his wounded leg and twitching in place. I could feel his pain, nearly strong enough to mask his fear, and part of me found them both to be good.

I looked down at the three would-be assailants. One of them was trying to pull a phone from his pocket. I frowned, and brought the tip of my cane down onto his hand. He dropped the phone with a pained yelp, and I used my cane to move the device over to the woman, who stared at me with wide eyes as she gingerly picked it up.

A few seconds later, she brought it to her ear, and said :

"Hello ? I-I want to report a … an assault, with a p-parahuman involved …"

This night wasn't the busiest Armsmaster had known in Brockton Bay. That dubious honor belonged to that shameful time when Lung had challenged the entire local Protectorate team and forced them to withdraw, leaving nearly an entire district in flames. But it was worse than the statistical average by any measurement he could track.

Word of the events at Winslow had spread with alarming speed. Someone within the PRT had leaked the information to an Empire-aligned TV station, and they'd run the story immediately – though they'd at least avoided revealing the identity of the victim, probably because that would have gotten them shut down with extreme prejudice.

Director Piggot was furious about it, and Armsmaster wasn't happy at the penetration of their systems it implied either. He knew the gangs had moles in the PRT, but he hadn't expected they'd be so blatant. He would have loved to run a security analysis on the entire branch, if only he had the time to do so – but there were always so many other important things to do to keep the Bay from sinking into anarchy …

Armsmaster mentally shook his head. Distracting himself while he was on the field was inefficient. As Director Piggot had predicted, the lesser members of the E88 had taken that as an excuse to go out in number to 'show the flag', as if the flag they'd pledged allegiance to was worth anything other than contempt. The jails of the city would be full of skinheads come the morning, most of whom would be let out with nothing more than a slap on the wrist and a citation for drunken public behavior.

He'd been redirected from returning to base in order to respond to a report of an assault which had been thwarted by what the caller insisted was a parahuman. Armsmaster's bike slowed down and stopped as he approached the location, and activated his helmet's infrared vision. At this hour, there were very few people out and about, and he immediately caught the heat signatures in the alleyway.

A quick scan revealed several injuries, all of which would require professional care but none of which were life-threatening. The three men – skinheads and clear members of the Empire 88 given the emblem they were all displaying – were laying on the ground, unconscious. Their victim was cowering against a wall, eyes darting around until she saw him.

Armsmaster approached her slowly, making sure that his halberd wasn't pointed anywhere it might be seen as a threat. There was nothing the woman could do to harm him unless she was a parahuman, but she was clearly traumatized and needed to be handled with care if she was to be of any use in figuring out what had happened.

"Miss, are you alright ?"

She nodded. Armsmaster was about to launch into his usual spiel, which had been optimized after countless encounters with traumatized civilians, where the woman shifted her gaze to something behind him, eyes wide. At the same time, Armsmaster heard it :

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

The hero turned, bringing his halberd up in a guard position as he did so, and frowned. His helmet's display was showing him nothing but static. A quick check of his various anti-intrusion software returned nothing : whatever was going on, it wasn't a system fault.

On a hunch, he activated a rarely used function of his armor, and the visor covering his right eye slid off, allowing him to look with his own flesh eye. This time, there was no static : while this Stranger effect affected his armor's cameras, it didn't affect natural vision.

The cape – and it had to be a cape, that much was immediately obvious – was approximately two meters tall. It (he ? it was impossible to tell for certain without his tools to analyse the cape's gait and body shape, but the clothes were of masculine cut) wore a black suit of the kind Armsmaster was used to see in PRT fundraising events rather than out on the streets at night, with an equally black under-shirt and tie, and carried a cane that was also black, and which was the source of the tapping sound which had drawn the hero's attention.

So far, not the most unusual look for a cape Armsmaster had ever seen, although most newcomers tended to use somewhat more practical gear. But that changed when he took a good look at the head of the newcomer. The head was smooth, completely devoid of features – like that of a mannequin, except wrought from a material so black it seemed to swallow light completely.

The effect was quite disturbing. Had Armsmaster met someone looking like this in any other circumstance, he would have assumed hostile intentions out of simple self-preservation. Here and now, he was willing to give the other cape the benefit of the doubt – parahumans didn't choose the way in which their powers manifested, after all.

The shadowy figure stopped a few meters from Armsmaster and inclined his head in greeting.

"Good evening," said Armsmaster, unwilling to risk provoking a cape with unknown powers unless absolutely necessary. "Are you the one responsible for the unconscious gang members in this alley ?"

Again, the figure inclined his head. Armsmaster was considering what do say next when he heard the sound of a police car screeching to a halt close by. A pair of officers emerged, their service weapons in hand, and did a double-take as they saw the scene. Armsmaster gestured for them to stay back for now, not wanting to spook the shadowy cape.

"Well, thank you for your assistance," he said aloud. "If I may ask, do you already have a cape name ?"

There was a pause, which surprised Armsmaster. Judging from the suit, it was clear the other cape had put some effort into his aesthetic, and choosing an appropriate name was the foundation of that. Eventually, though, he answered, and Armsmaster had to suppress the impulse to jump in surprise.

"LASOMBRA," said a hundred whispering voices, seemingly coming from every shadow around them.

"… Alright. Lasombra, if you want to help people, then how about joining the Protectorate ?"

He didn't want to think of how Image would handle a cape like them, but the offer had to be made regardless. The ENE branch of the Protectorate was short-handed at the best of time, and Shadow Stalker's removal hadn't helped matters, even if it'd been perfectly justified. Someone who could deal with three thugs without letting the victim come to harm, who was strong enough to crush the broken pistol he'd noticed laying on the ground, with what seemed to be a Stranger power affecting cameras, and who cared enough to stay close to the victim until help arrived ? Disturbing look or not, the Protectorate could work with someone like this.

Lasombra shook his head, and the sound of laughter rose from all around them, making both policemen and the victim shudder in fright. Before Armsmaster could say or do anything, he started lowering himself into his own shadow, as if a portal had opened under his feet. Within seconds, he was gone, and the patch of blackness into which he'd disappeared had vanished as well.

After a moment of scanning the area with every sensor device in his armor, none of which returned anything out of the ordinary – including the strange glitching phenomenon Lasombra's presence had caused – Armsmaster activated his armor's communication suite.

"Director ?" he said once the line was established. "This is Armsmaster speaking. I believe I've just encountered a new cape in the Bay."

"What can you tell me about this new cape you met yesterday ?"

"To start with, he knew how to fight, and how to avoid causing permanent or lethal damage. Given the damage he did to the weapon we found on the scene, he's capable of exerting a lot more strength than he did against his human targets. That speaks of either extensive training or experience with his powers, or a combat Thinker ability to manage how much force he is using in order to avoid killing by accident. I have done a search in the Protectorate's database, and there's no trace of a cape like him. Considering that his look is quite distinctive, I believe we're dealing with an adult with combat experience who recently triggered if a combat Thinker power isn't at play."

"Hmm. About that gun, how much force are we talking about, exactly ?"

"Looking at the remains of the weapon, a considerable amount. To put in familiar terms, I don't think PRT standard body armor would hold up to him if he went all-out. Also, before being crushed, the pistol was fired, but I didn't find any bullet impacts around, meaning that he absorbed them without issue. Taking all of this into account, I would say he's a Brute 3, 4 at most."

"I see. What else ?"

"According to the victim's testimony, at some point during the engagement, he 'flickered' to get in front of one of the gang members who tried to run. From the description, it sounded like short-range teleportation. Then, of course, there's the way he disappeared after talking to me."

"So we need to add a Mover rating to his file. Alright. And finally, the Stranger effect."

"It affected my armor's sensors, but not my natural vision. I checked the recording and asked Dragon to do the same : we both found the same interference, so I believe it is something which affects machines directly rather than the human brain when perceiving him through them. Of course, if you think it necessary, I'll check myself in M/S confinement."

"We can't afford to lose you right now, and it seems that the effect was limited to technology. If so, he has to be able to turn it off, or there's no way he can go out in public and not get caught on some random civilian's phone."

"That was my conclusion as well. In this day and age, such a Stranger effect would ultimately expose its owner sooner or later."

"And we haven't heard of anything like that in the Bay. Not exactly the most useful Stranger power I've heard of, though I guess Dragon's suits would find it problematic, and I'm sure the containment crew at Eagleton would love to have someone with that power on hand. Now, for his chosen name … Lasombra sounds Spanish to me."

"It is. Taken as two words, 'La Sombra' would translate to the 'The Shadow'."

"Rather on-the-nose, don't you think ?"

"Yes, but it suits him."

"I suppose it does. Powers tend to run in families, right ? And they often have similar themes when they do, like what's going on with New Wave. Do we know what Shadow Stalker's relatives were doing at the time ?"

"I checked this morning before this meeting. Her mother and siblings were both accounted for by the security detail we arranged for them. I also checked on Sophia Hess herself, in case her arrest had caused her to undergo a Second Trigger. She was also accounted for at the time of Lasombra's sighting."

"And Miss Hebert ? Brute 3-4 would be more than enough to break out of that locker, after all, and since Lasombra is clearly a grap-bag cape, a Changer form wouldn't be impossible."

"Also still in the hospital. She hasn't regained consciousness yet. However, the doctors have noticed that her recovery is proceeding exceptionally well. When she first arrived, they were worried they'd need to call in Panacea, but her immune system has fought off the infection with admirable speed. If she triggered, as seems more and more likely, then it must be with a low-level Brute power, combining enhanced strength and regeneration – which would be the perfect power to get out of her dangerous situation and fight back against those responsible. I've already made a note to contact her family once she's had time to recover, both physically and mentally, to confirm whether that is the truth and offer her a position in the Wards if so."

"Well, it was worth a shot. So, we've got a grab-bag with Brute, Mover, and Stranger abilities, possibly with a combat Thinker rating on top of it, running around in the Bay punching criminals. Do you think he's a threat ?"

"I lack sufficient data to determine how a battle between us would unfold. But while his aesthetics are questionable, he hasn't committed any crime, and his actions so far are typical of a heroically-minded vigilante, one with enough self-control to avoid killing the opposition."

"After Shadow Stalker, I'd feel much better if we could bring him in before he slip ups and do something he'll regret, potential combat Thinker or not. Even if he's showing far more self-control than she ever did, with Brutes, it only takes one slip."

"As would I. If we meet again, I'll make sure to explain the dangers of operating independently and without support. With his reaction to my initial offer, I'm not sure how much good it will do, though."

"Better to try anyway. You never know, maybe we'll get lucky and Lasombra is smart enough that he'll realize one man cannot take on the gangs alone, no matter his powers. In the meantime, I will have Miss Militia brief the Wards; you inform the rest of your team. But first, get some rest. You have been up all night running around town, and you are no good to anyone dead on your feet."

"… Yes, Director."

Notes from the meeting between Director Emily Piggot and Armsmaster, recorded by the latter's armor, January 4th, 2011.

After a couple of days at the hospital, I was allowed to return home to finish my convalescence in familiar surroundings (and also free the room, which the hospital needed for other people, although nobody was rude enough to say so where I could hear).

I was still reeling from how quickly things had changed in my life. Mere days ago, I'd been dragging my feet back to Winslow after winter break, dreading a return to the hell that had become my life in this place. Then … then it had happened. I'd woken up in the hospital, with Dad sitting at my bedside.

That much had been expected, but what he'd told me next (after hugging me in a shaky embrace which had seen both of us cry in each other's presence for the first time since Mom's funeral) hadn't been.

The bullying had been exposed while I was unconscious. The Trio, who had seemed untouchable to me for so long, had been caught by the PRT when they'd come to investigate, and their web of lies had fallen apart the moment they'd been faced with people who actually cared.

Sophia and Madison were under arrest, and Emma … Emma was in psychiatric care, because apparently she was too crazy to be legally responsible for her actions – but not too crazy for the Winslow faculty to notice, or even for Alan, her father, to get her some help before she turned from my best friend into a sadistic bitch.

I was both relieved beyond words, and angry that, if it was so easy, then why had it taken so long ?! Why had nobody listened, why had nobody done anything until they had tried to murder me ?

Dad was equal parts furious and horrified at what had happened to me, and devastated that I hadn't talked to him about it. He didn't blame me, but he blamed himself, and that was even worse. We were … talking about it, but it was hard. I had spent so long keeping things hidden from him, it had become a habit.

One I would have to break. Me surviving and the Trio being exposed had been a miracle, and I wasn't going to let it go to waste.

I wasn't going to go back to Winslow. Dad had been very clear about that, and apparently the lawyers who'd contacted him (the same ones who had handled my medical bills, which was good since our insurance wasn't great even by US standards) had implied that a transfer to Arcadia was in the cards as part of a settlement out of court, once I recovered from my injuries.

Dad had been suspicious of such generosity, but things had become clear when we'd been visited by one of the Protectorate's most renowned heroes in the Bay. Meeting Miss Militia in person would have been great under most circumstances, but not when she'd come with a bunch of NDAs for Dad and I to sign along with other legal documents.

Learning that Sophia Hess had been Shadow Stalker had been a blow to my fragile mental state. Shadow Stalker was supposed to be a hero. She'd action figures, and she'd – she'd –

I took a deep breath to calm myself down before I started spiralling. It was over. Sophia had been punished. Shadow Stalker's retirement had been announced, though the truth had been kept hidden to avoid endangering her family. According to Miss Militia, she was headed straight for juvie : there had been talks of re-assigning her to a containment zone, but given how blatantly she'd lied to her superiors, the PRT was worried about her lying again to hide that something had gotten out on her watch.

The PRT wanted to keep what had happened under wraps to avoid emboldening the Empire. I was pissed off that they seemed to care more about their reputation than the actual crime that had been committed against me, but the settlement they were willing to offer in exchange for us staying silent and not going to court was substantial enough that I was willing to swallow my anger, for Dad's sake if nothing else.

Once I recovered from my injuries and was cleared to return to school, I would be transferred to Arcadia. I would never have to go to Winslow again, never have to see any of the people who had stood by and done nothing while I was harassed and thrown into the locker.

Well, maybe I would go see Mister Leeward and say thank you. He'd probably saved my life by calling for help and providing first aid, and he had definitely saved my life by calling the PRT himself instead of passing it up the chain. I knew with bitter certainty that Blackwell would have done everything she could to hide the consequences of her incompetence, and if the Trio got away with attempted murder, actual murder was the logical next step.

But that would have to wait : for now, just thinking back on that day sent me shivering. I doubted I could face anyone from Winslow without having a breakdown, even him – besides, it wasn't like I remembered him helping me.

I tried to think of something else, and settled on that lucid dream I still remembered from my time unconscious in the hospital. It had been nice, even if very unrealistic. Helping someone, having powers to fight bullies, being offered to join the Protectorate by Armsmaster himself … after what had happened, I could understand why my subconscious had conjured a scenario where I wasn't powerless, and where one of my childhood heroes respected me.

That last part had been the one which had broken the fantasy and made me realize this was all a dream, which predictably had caused it to end, replaced by nightmares of the locker and my bullies' laughter. Thinking of that made my mood sour, though. So, to distract myself with something other than my own thoughts, I turned on my computer, and once the lengthy boot-up sequence was complete, logged on PHO. I'd an account there, though I'd never posted anything – I just used it to keep track of the cape scene in Brockton and elsewhere, which was one of the few ways of escaping my life I'd left after Emma and her accomplices had set about making my existence miserable.

Maybe I could find some compilation of Leet's most amusing failures to distract me, I thought, clicking on the Brockton Bay's sub-section of the forum. Then I froze and I saw the title of the newest thread on my screen.

Topic : New cape in Brockton Bay : Lasombra

Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)

Posted On Jan 4th 2011 :

So, according, to a couple of my friends in the BBPD, last night, our very own Armsmaster encountered a new cape on the scene while responding to a call about a mugging (and possibly more) by a trio of Empire 88 goons being interrupted by a parahuman vigilante.

Here is how they described him (their words, not mine) :

'A creepy-ass looking guy, in a black suit, complete with black shirt and tie, with a pimp cane, a face like a carved chunk of darkness, [and] a voice like a demon out of Hell.'

Spooky. We don't know a lot about him : just that he talked with Armsmaster for a moment, introduced himself as Lasombra (which my Internet skills tell me is Spanish for 'The Shadow', capitalization intended), then vanished into the ground. Oh, and they found a gun on the scene which had been completely crushed against the pavement.

There's a joke in there somewhere about the kind of hero Brockton Bay deserves, but I'll leave it to the rest of you to figure it out.

I blinked. Took off my glasses, rubbed my eyes, put them back on, and checked the screen again. The post was still there.

Oh.

Maybe it hadn't been a dream after all.

AN : And here is the second chapter, as promised. Thank you everyone for your support and your enthusiasm.

If you think that the Trio and Taylor's Winslow situation were handed a bit too quickly ... well, that's because I don't want to write highschool horror (which I think Taylor's time in that ... place, qualifies at). Also, again, three teenage girls aren't criminal masterminds - especially since the Trio are stupid psychos used to coast on their advantages and, in one case, their father's influence and wealth.

Also, those of you with some knowledge of Vampire the Masquerade might find their suspension of disbelief stretched somewhat by Taylor overcoming Lasombra's attempt at possession (which, fair). There are two in-universe reasons for that :

One, Lasombra is weakened by his time in the Abyss, as pointed out in the previous chapter's first scene. That's the most obvious, and thus boring, answer.

Two, even without being weakened, the truth is, Lasombra is kind of a pathetic individual. Oh, back in the World of Darkness, he was an unliving demigod of blood and shadow, to be sure, but power doesn't equal mental fortitude, and to be blunt, his plan to enter the Abyss in order to become a god was idiotic and doomed to fail from the start - and if he knew ANYTHING about the Abyss, he would have realized that. I suspect his ego blinded him to the truth, however.

Finally, I find the notion that the Antediluvians deliberately cultivate their image as eldritch, unknowable monsters while actually being 'just' very old vampires, which is mentioned as a possible interpretation in Beckett's Jyhad Diary, to be an interesting one. Especially in Lasombra's case, whom I can't help but read as someone with a MASSIVE inferiority-superiority complex, who basically forced his issues on his entire Clan, to everyone's detriment (seriously, read the Lasombra Clanbook, it's basically a millennia-long cycle of abuse stretching back to the First City - although the same can be said of every single Clan, except maybe the Salubri).

By contrast, Taylor is Taylor, and though she is only a traumatized teenage girl with a severe case of depression at this point in time, if there is one thing she doesn't lack, it's willpower and determination. Sometimes to her detriment, yes (see : continuing to go to Winslow for months, and not going Carrie in canon the moment she got her powers), but she's certainly no quitter. If Lasombra had gotten to her after she finally broke and had her Trigger Event ... well, that would be whole other story, and the combination of Queen Administrator and the Antediluvian's spirit would have made something very terrifying indeed.

Tomorrow, the next chapter, where Taylor start experimenting with her power, and absolutely nothing goes wrong for anybody.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and look forward to your thoughts and comments.

Zahariel out.

I went through the rest of the thread on Lasombra, but it was nothing but wild speculation, and I stopped reading after XxVoid_CowboyxX's post suggesting I was a rebranded Shadow Stalker due to the aesthetic similarities between our powers. Compared to the kind of theories he usually pushed on PHO, it was downright tame, but the idea of being associated with Sophia Hess in any way pissed me off.

I spent the rest of the afternoon doing online research. PHO, for all its faults, was a goldmine of information about powers. I took it all with a grain of salt : it was the Internet, after all, and any website which let the kind of conspiracy theorists clamoring about a secret organization selling powers and controlling all of the world's governments clearly wasn't a source you should trust without reserve.

But I recognized enough of the terms being thrown about from official press releases and news stories to know the basics, at least, were sound. Later, I'd need to do some digging into more reliable sources, but I didn't want to trip any virtual tripwire and out myself – browsing PHO was common teenager behavior, going out looking for official material on parahuman powers wasn't.

Looking at the different recognized power categories, I was what was called a Master. While most people thought 'mind-control' when they thought of Masters, creating and controlling minions was a sub-category of that classification, and I was pretty certain that was what I'd done (since the nurses would have noticed if I'd gone missing in the middle of the night, especially with how many IVs I'd been hooked on). Apparently, creating a controlled entity was called a projection, and mine had enough reach to go all across town from the hospital to the Boardwalk.

From my cursory research, that range was pretty impressive. And Lasombra (a bit on the nose, but honestly a better name that I was likely to have come up with if I'd needed to think about it rather than let my subconscious handle it) was a lot tougher than most projections, too. The closest thing I could find online was a cape with the ability to project ghost bears, and their range was a lot shorter than mine.

The more I read, the more excited I felt. I had powers. I could be a hero. Sure, I couldn't be Alexandria and punch people in person, but my projection was strong and immune to bullets, and I wouldn't even have to risk my own life. Lasombra could go out on patrols while I was safe at home, and as long as I was careful and didn't do anything stupid, nobody would be the wiser. Which was important, because while Lasombra was bulletproof, I wasn't, and targeting the Master was Parahuman Tactics 101.

I tried to ignore the little voice in the back of my head telling me that I was being delusional, that my dream had just been that – a dream – and I was editing my own vague memories of it to fit the story I'd read on PHO. Something had broken the locker, after all. Since Lasombra had appeared while I was comatose, I must have conjured him for the first time inside the locker, and he'd broken me out before disappearing.

Thinking back on that time was hard, and left me shaking after a few minutes, but I persevered, and eventually managed to half-remember punching the metal surface again and again and again … and then the door being gone. The memory ended there, which must have been when I'd gone completely in shock. Since Mister Leeward would probably have reported seeing a silhouette of shadows standing over my unconscious body, I deduced that maintaining the projection required a certain level of awareness – maybe something akin to a REM state, which I'd reached in the locker and then later in the hospital ? I would need to experiment to figure it out.

My reading was interrupted by a knock on my door.

"Kiddo ?" Dad called out. "Dinner is ready."

"I'm coming," I replied, instinctually moving to close my tabs, before realizing there really wasn't anything compromising about them.

Dad helped me down the stairs. I wanted to say I didn't need his help, but not only would that hurt him, it would also be a lie. Parahuman or not, my power hadn't done anything for my injuries.

Dad and I ate dinner together : he'd made lasagna, which after several days of hospital food I devoured with gusto, much to his amusement. Then I cleaned up, changed my bandages, and went to bed. I'd worried excitement would make it hard to fall asleep, but instead, I was out like a light the moment my head hit the pillow. Whether that was because of my still recovering body or of some aspect of my power, I didn't know.

The darkness engulfed me, and I was … elsewhere.

I was floating in blackness. I could still feel my body, laying on my bed in my room, but the physical sensations were distant. It reminded me of when I'd been on painkillers in the hospital, except my mind felt clear, not muddled by chemicals.

And I had other senses, ones which I had no name for but instinctually knew how to use. I reached out with them, and prodded at the darkness surrounding me. The closest approximation I could think of was of being deep underwater, far past the point where the light of sun and stars reached. I wondered whether there were creatures which dwelled in this Abyss, and the moment the question came to mind, I knew that it was so, and that I didn't want them to notice me.

I kept probing around, and found that there were variations in the darkness, spots from which I could hear something like voices.

Curious, I moved toward the nearest such spot. How exactly that worked, I had no idea : I simply wished to move, and the spot got closer and closer, until it and I occupied the same bit of not-quite-space, and I –

– was out of the darkness, standing in a small, dirty room with barred windows and a single bare lightbulb shining overhead. I glanced down, and saw the same body I remembered from my dream-that-wasn't : a suit, gloved hands, and a cane, all black as sin.

I heard a man's voice, cursing in a language I recognized as Chinese. I turned just in time to see an Asian man jump in my direction, holding a knife with murder in his eyes. I smashed him on reflex with my cane, hitting him in the side of his chest with a sickening crunching noise. He fell to the ground, groaning in pain, clutching his broken ribs, and I noticed that his belt was undone.

I knocked him out with another blow to the head, before remembering that it was only in fiction that such blows didn't have long-term consequences – and yet, somehow, I felt absolutely certain that he would wake up without brain damage.

I hoped I was right, as I didn't want to start my heroic career with accidental murder.

I was drawn away from the unconscious body at my feet by the sound of weeping nearby. Looking at its source, I found a woman staring up at me, tears running down her face. She was young, pretty, and clearly terrified. Considering her surroundings, that wasn't surprising.

Around us, I heard the grunts, the sound of flesh hitting flesh, and more quiet weeping. I looked down at the man I'd knocked unconscious, and I recognized the pattern of his clothes. Red and green – these were colors any native of the Bay would know on sight.

It didn't take me long to put the pieces together and realize where I was : inside one of the Asian Bad Boyz whorehouses, where the women kidnapped by the gang were forced into prostitution. Despite Dad's attempts to shelter me, I'd heard far too many stories of women being taken off the street, or being visited in their homes and given the 'choice' to serve or have their family suffer the ABB's wrath.

Between this and what had happened on my first use of my powers, a part of me wondered if there was an aspect of my abilities which was drawn to crimes to women, or just crime in general. Sadly, given the state of the Bay, it was equally probable Lasombra had manifested at purely random places which just happened to be close to a crime in progress.

The rest of me was filled with incandescent rage. I'd known such places existed before, of course. But it was one thing to know in the abstract, and another entirely to be inside one, surrounded by undeniable evidence.

How could anyone allow such evil to exist ?

I knew the answer, of course. Lung. The Dragon of Kyushu, who had battled Leviathan and walked away, even as an entire island of the Japanese archipelago sunk beneath the waves around them, condemning millions to death or exile. The parahuman who had faced off with the entire Protectorate team upon arriving in the Bay, and forced them to back off with his awesome power. People were terrified of him, and the police didn't dare to risk provoking him, meaning that the entire Asian community – many of whom were refugees from Kyushu, or their children – was in his thrall, forced to pay tribute and allow him and his gang to do as they pleased.

The smart thing to do would be to help the woman escape. The clothes she was wearing, and the running remains of her make-up, made it clear she had only just been captured. If I discreetly led her outside, it would be an objectively good deed, and the gang member would be blamed for letting her escape. Given what I knew of Lung, he would likely get killed for the failure, but considering what he'd been about to do when I had arrived, I couldn't find it in myself to care.

Yes. That would be the smart thing to do. With my powers, I could easily knock out a few more gangers on the way if need be, and as long as the woman followed my instructions (and I figured out a way to communicate with her that didn't make her pass out in fright, although carrying her unconscious body out might be easier …) it should work. Nobody would blame me for being cautious.

All it would require was to ignore all the other women in the building, being raped day after day after day to fill the pockets of the gang which had kidnapped and enslaved them.

I couldn't. I physically couldn't. The very idea made me sick, which was weird since Lasombra didn't have a stomach.

I tried to take a deep breath, but Lasombra didn't have lungs or a mouth, which in hindsight was probably a blessing, as it kept me from smelling the stench of my surroundings.

"STAY HERE," I said to the woman. She flinched, and I realized I'd need to work on making Lasombra sound less terrifying. I wanted to talk to her in more details, but even a single word was making her recoil in terror, so I didn't want to see what effect a full sentence might have. "HIDE."

"Wh-what are you going to do ?" she asked fearfully.

I hesitated, then answered :

"HUNT."

And so I did. My plan was simple : go through the entire building, take out every gang member and 'customer', then have one of the women call the PRT. Everyone knew Lung had moles in the BBPD, but I was gambling that Lasombra's presence would warrant the intervention of the PRT and the Protectorate, which were hopefully less corrupt and would be able to handle helping the victims and getting them away from Lung's vengeance.

The next ten minutes went relatively well. I moved through the building like a vengeful shadow, and while I saw things I would remember to my grave, I managed to keep a lid on my temper and didn't start castrating the men I knocked unconscious. Each time, I gestured for the women to stay silent, bringing a finger to where my mouth would be if Lasombra had a face in a shushing gesture.

I didn't like how scared of me they all looked, but since they all followed my instructions, I told myself that it was necessary. If it meant that they were free from the ABB by the night's end, then I was fine with them being scared of Lasombra. I knew I wouldn't have cared if I'd been rescued from the Trio by the most terrifying-looking cape imaginable, and their situation was far worse than anything these bitches had been capable of.

Inevitably, though, something went wrong. I turned a corner and came face-to-face with another criminal, one who was holding a gun in his hand in complete violation of all firearm safety principles. I punched him out before he could react, but his index finger twitched on the trigger, and he fired a shot straight into my foot – which had least kept it from going through the floor and risking hitting someone who wasn't immune to bullets.

I froze as he fell, wondering if anybody would react or if the sound was too commonplace to bother. I should have known I wasn't so lucky.

Further ahead in the corridor, a door went flying off its hinges, kicked in with impossible strength. On reflex, I brought up my cane before the improvised projectile hit me, and the old, mouldy wood burst apart at the point of impact, filling the air with shards. A voice bellowed, full of rage :

"Who dares disturb my rest ?!"

A tall mask burst out of a room. His body was covered in tattoos of Eastern dragons, and he was wearing only a pair of pants and an ornate steel mask also shaped like a dragon's head. I recognized that mask from the descriptions of the Bay's parahumans I'd read during the day, and though Lasombra lacked a heart, I still felt mine skip a beat at the sight.

Lung. This was Lung, the strongest parahuman in the city, who had fought entire teams of heroes and villains and avoided death or capture.

I briefly asked myself what the hell he was doing here, before catching a glimpse of the room behind him. There was a double bed there, and several women on it, cowering back from the entrance, fear plain on their faces. They were naked, and I saw plenty of bruises and other marks of harm on their flesh.

My anger flared, and the fear retreated slightly. Lung was strong, yes, but what had he done with that strength ? Nothing except hurt people who couldn't fight back. He wasn't that different from the Trio, except that his power meant that almost nobody could fight back.

With my nascent panic under control, I was able to take a more objective look at Lung, and noticed that while he was tall, Lasombra was slightly taller. He paused as he saw me and the unconscious man at my feet, and his body language shifted, showing even more anger than before.

"You. You dare mess with what is mine ?" he growled. "Who the fuck are you ?"

I said nothing, thinking furiously. This was bad. Really, really bad. The building was full of people, most of them innocent, and if there was one thing Lung wasn't known for, it was his reluctance to cause collateral damage, even in his own territory. I had to get Lung away from here, before they could get caught in the crossfire.

A desperate, improvised plan came together in my mind, and I acted before my survival instincts could stop me. Flexing the ability I remembered using the last time I'd been Lasombra, I teleported right in front of Lung. This time, I was more aware of the process : it felt like every shadow was connected, and I'd simply shifted my projection from one spot to another.

Lung didn't recoil from my sudden proximity : instead, fire erupted along his arms as he activated his pyrokinetic power. I felt a sudden surge of terror at the sight of the flames, but I forced myself to ignore it.

Moving faster than I ever remembered doing, I seized Lung by the throat and threw him out the window. He roared as he flew through the air, smashed through the wooden boards, fell a couple of stories, and smashed onto the pavement. I knew it wouldn't stop him (I wouldn't have done that to someone without a Brute factor to absorb the damage – heroes didn't kill unless it really couldn't be helped, after all, even people like Lung), but it had put some distance between him and the innocents he'd enslaved.

Now I had to follow and finish the job somehow. I looked at the busted window, wondering if I should jump through as well rather than waste time taking the stairs. Then, without warning, I had an image of the street outside in my mind's eye, showing me every shadow and darkened corner.

I flexed my power again, and suddenly Lasombra was standing on the street, right in front of Lung as he picked himself up from the cracked road. Given the state of Brockton Bay's infrastructure in the poorer areas, it was difficult to tell the difference between where he had landed and the rest of the road. I looked around and quickly figured out where we were : judging by the silhouettes of the buildings I saw around us, we were somewhere in the eastern end of the Bay, deep inside the ABB's territory. A section of town Dad would never have let me go in alone or after dark.

That didn't mean there weren't people in the derelict buildings around us, though. Hopefully anyone living in this part of town knew better than to come out to see what all the noise was about. At the very least, nobody would be stupid enough to risk being burned alive to have something to post on social media.

The leader of the ABB glared at me as he stood up, his eyes visible through the mask and filled with fury. He was taller than he'd been when I'd thrown him, and his eyes were starting to glow.

"I'm going to enjoy killing you," he promised.

I was terrified, even though my true body was safe far from here. I didn't know how resilient my projection really was, or what would happen to me if it was destroyed. Looking it up online hadn't been any help : some Masters were perfectly fine with throwing their summoned minions to die in waves, while others had to pay a cost for each one they lost. If that was the case for me, then given that I'd only just left the hospital and was still in poor health, maybe I would actually die if Lasombra was destroyed.

I felt the shadows stretching out around me, and knew that I could escape easily – move from shadow to shadow, or return to the realm of darkness. Lung wouldn't be able to follow me there, I was certain of it.

But I thought of the women in the building behind me, and of all the others who had suffered because of the man in front of me. Of all the families that had been torn apart by kidnapping or death, all because Lung needed to push others down so that he could feel strong. Of the fear he'd inflicted upon this city, upon my city, for years and years, with nobody able to stop him.

For all his power, for all his infamy, he was still nothing more than a bully at his core.

And I would not ignore bullying, not now that I had the power to do something about it. I would not be an apathetic bystander, like all those who had ignored me.

I would be better.

I slammed my cane into the ground, and stared down at Lung with my eyeless gaze. The sight of me refusing to cower in fear infuriated Lung even more, and he threw himself at me, scales spreading across his growing body, hands already wreathed into flames.

I wanted to be a hero, and now was going to be my first superpowered brawl, even though I'd rather have it be with just about anyone else.

"Velocity, this is Director Piggot. We have reports of Lung facing off against Lasombra in the east of town."

"Copy that, I am on my way. Where exactly is it ?"

"Follow Conway Street, turn left at the intersection with 5th Avenue and you should see them."

"Rules of engagement ?"

"Don't try to fight Lung. Limit yourself to rescue until more reinforcements arrive. Armsmaster and Miss Militia have already been informed and are on their way as well. Keep civilians from getting involved, and if you can help Lasombra disengage safely, do so."

"Copy, ma'am."

Excerpt from the PRT communications, January 8th, 2011.

AN : And here we have caught up to the chapters I'd finished before deciding to publish this story. Don't worry : the next one won't take long, as it is mostly finished already.

Also, I want to remind everyone on FFnet that I've stopped reading PMs on this website that aren't from people I already know, since my inbox has been inundated with automated messages written by bots trying to sell me AI-generated "art" as commissions for my stories.

As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter, and look forward to your thoughts and comments.

Zahariel out.

Lung was furious. He'd been enjoying himself, taking the pleasure that was his due as master of his domain, when he'd heard the sounds of fighting in the building. Gunshots were far from uncommon in this part of town, but this one had come from inside the building. And there were no circumstances he could think of in which a single gunshot inside the walls was acceptable.

When he'd come out of the room, he'd expected to find one of the wastrels making up most of the ABB's ranks looking at him in terror after discharging his weapon accidentally. He'd been looking forward to vent his rage at being interrupted by ripping such a fool limb from limb as an example for the rest, before incinerating the remains.

He had not expected to find an unknown cape who'd dared to intrude deep inside his territory, break into one of his buildings, and attack his minions. And he'd certainly not expected to be thrown out of the window with the same care one would show a piece of trash.

That was an insult his pride couldn't countenance. He was going to tear that shadow bastard to pieces, and remind everyone in the Bay what happened when you crossed Lung.

As Lung stood, the other cape suddenly appeared in front of him. With a mighty roar, Lung hurled fire at his foe, filling his field of view with a torrent of fire. There was no scream or sound of sizzling flesh, however, and as he frowned and started to advance to investigate, something smashed into the back of his skull with incredible strength.

Despite his reinforced state, Lung felt the bone crack under the strength of the blow. Pain lanced through his brain, stars swam in his vision, and he barely managed to bring his arms up in time to avoid smashing face-first into the molten pavement.

Underneath the burning rage that filled his thoughts, the gang leader was impressed. After so many years using his power, he had an instinctive grasp of his current level of ramping up at any given time, and the blow would have turned the head of an ordinary human into mist. Perhaps this cape would give him an actual challenge before he killed him and burned their corpse to ash as a reminder to the rest of the city of what he was capable of.

He scrambled to his feet and turned just in time to block another punch, catching it within his clawed left hand. He felt the bones in his arm crack at the impact before starting to heal and strengthen as his power responded to the threat, and the momentum combined with his precarious position was enough to throw him off-balance.

Before he could recover and bring his guard up, the shadowy fuck smashed the pommel of his cane into Lung's jaw with his free hand, and the Dragon of Kyushu tasted his own blood. He spat a mouthful of broken teeth under his mask, already feeling their replacement growing as his mouth changed into a reptilian maw. The rest of his body was being covered in scaled armor, and he was still growing, now towering over his enemy.

Yet still, he was the only one who'd gotten hit up to now, and the humiliation of it burned far hotter than the fading pain of his injuries.

"'ill 'oo !" he thundered as he swept his right hand at the bastard, still holding his fist in his left to keep him in place.

But before he could make contact, the black fucker vanished, Lung's grip tightening on empty air. Moving on instinct honed by many battles, Lung leapt forward just in time to avoid being hit on the head by another super-powered blow from behind.

His rage was growing along with his body. That shadow bastard dared to attack him from behind, not once, but twice ?! Oh, he would pay for that.

This time, his punch connected. It felt weird, like punching containment foam before it had fully hardened – a feeling Lung was familiar with from his clashes with the PRT over the years – but the impact was enough to send the living shadow flying back a few meters. He slammed his cane into the ground to stop his slide, carving a furrow into the pavement as he did so and ending up on his knees at the slide's end.

He stood up, slowly, with infuriating calm and poise, and started walking toward Lung, marking every step with his cane.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Taking advantage of the lull in the melee, Lung threw more fire, not just toward his enemy but in every direction. The other cape could clearly teleport, so he would fill the space with fire until he had nowhere left to run –

The shadowy cape erupted from the inferno, trails of black smoke following in his wake, and slammed into Lung's midsection like a truck, causing him to lose his balance and fall backward. He landed heavily, and the other cape crouched on him before delivering punch after punch, his cane gone at some point in the confusion of close-quarters melee. The first blow shattered Lung's mask to pieces; the second slammed his head into the molten pavement; the third shattered his jaw.

Even with his regeneration, Lung couldn't completely ignore repeated head trauma like this. It took him a moment for his mind to clear from each impact, but the bastard kept punching him, over and over again. It was a race now, to see whether his power would strengthen him beyond his adversary's ability to harm before he was knocked out.

Through the deluge of blows, Lung noticed that it wasn't hot anymore. In fact, it was freezing, far beyond what was normal for a January night on the East Coast. In between punches, he saw that the fire he'd unleashed was gone, smothered by an unnatural darkness that stretched out from behind the other cape to cover the entire street.

What the fuck ? Only Leviathan had been able to extinguish his flames before. For the first time since he'd swum away from the sinking island where he'd faced an Endbringer, Lung felt something like fear.

He blinked to clear his vision, just in time to see the would-be hero bringing his two hands together, holding his ridiculous cane upside-down – when had he gotten it back ?

From his position, Lung had a good view of the cape's faceless visage. Maybe it was the repeated head trauma, but he swore he could see things moving in the coiling black smoke – vast and terrible things, lurking in a place to which his opponent was but a gateway to. Great beasts, so much bigger and stronger than he could ever be, swimming in infinite darkness.

In that moment, the feeling of unease that had been brewing in Lung's heart since the start of the fight bloomed into full-fledged dread. He felt very, very small, for reasons he would never be willing or able to explain.

Then the fiend spoke, his words the scream of demons let out of Hell to drag the guilty to their judgement :

"STAY. DOWN."

The cane came down. There was pain, and then darkness, accompanied by a bitter sensation Kenta had done everything in his power to avoid ever since he'd escaped from the jails of the CUI :

Defeat.

Holy shit.

I couldn't believe it. I had done it. I'd won ! I'd fought Lung, one of the most powerful villains on the East Coast in a straight fight, and I'd won !

As I stood up from my enemy's unconscious body, I felt giddy with excitement. It was fortunate that none of my emotions filtered through to Lasombra, because him dancing a little jig next to Lung's unconscious form would have been weird.

It hadn't been easy, far from it. My instinctual fear of fear had turned out to be rooted in reality, as Lung's flames had burned at it like it was dry paper, forcing me to draw more shadowy … stuff from the Abyss to replace it, something which I knew I couldn't do forever. And the longer the fight lasted, the stronger Lung would get, and the more collateral damage he would cause. Rescuing a bunch of enslaved women wouldn't have meant much if it meant an entire city district was razed to the ground in the process.

So I'd gone all out, straight from the start. I'd forced myself not to use whatever Thinker ability helped me hold back to avoid killing people, and punched as hard as I could. Which, as it turned out, was very, very hard. Looking down at him, I was relieved to find that he was still breathing.

Not that I would have mourned him if he had died : if anyone deserved death, it was the sex-slaving, drug-trafficking crime lord. But I felt that fifteen years old was too young to be a killer. And it would probably make my relationship with the Protectorate even more tense than it already was, what with me having laughed in Armsmaster's face when I'd thought his offer to join had been a dream.

… I suddenly realized that between the ABB gang members and Lung, I was having to justify not killing to myself a lot tonight. That was worrying, but I'd deal with it later. Right now, I felt drained, exhausted in a way I didn't remember ever feeling before. Even if it didn't look like it thanks to the absence of cosmetic damage, Lung's flames had taken a chunk out of the shadow-stuff from which Lasombra was made.

Okay, I told myself. Fire bad. I would make sure to remember that going forward. If the ancient cavemen could manage it, then so could I.

When Lung had bathed the street in fire, I'd also figured out how to stretch out my shadowscape to smother the flames, all while punching him with every bit of strength I could muster.

Was this how it worked for every cape ? Learning new aspects of your power in the middle of a fight, instinctually knowing how to use them ? Given how the recruitment pitches for the Ward program insisted on the necessity of training in order to properly use parahuman abilities, I didn't think so (unless the pitches were lying, of course, which I found much more believable than I'd have a month ago). But I wasn't going to complain.

I was about to go looking for a way to contact the authorities when, with a pop of displaced air, a man wearing a crimson demon mask, with a bandolier of grenades around his chest, appeared next to me.

Oni Lee. The only other known cape part of the ABB. A known sociopath with the power to teleport, leaving behind short-lived clones of himself, which he had used to become a nightmarish suicide bomber. Not nearly as strong as Lung, but equally unconcerned with collateral damage, and I was already drained from my fight with his boss.

Fuck.

On instinct, I tried to reach for him, and to my surprise, the shadows stretched out into a long tendril that snarled around his leg – yet another ability I hadn't realized I possessed. Before I could react to this new development, however, Oni Lee had already teleported away, and the clone my shadow tentacle (what the fuck) had been wrapping itself around pulled two of the pins on his grenades, exploding in a burst of heat and light that made the shadows in the street recoil, however briefly.

Casting my perception back into the shadowscape, I sensed Oni Lee's presence behind me, and teleported Lasombra in turn, before he could throw more grenades at me. Slowly, he turned to look at me. His mask hid his expression completely, yet I still felt a sense of emptiness when I looked at him, an absence that hadn't been here when I'd faced Lung.

I wondered if it had anything to do with his use of his clones as suicide bombers. The clone had pulled the pins on the grenades, but Oni Lee obviously hadn't done the same, which meant that either he could control them remotely for the few seconds they kept existing, or the clones were self-aware enough to do it themselves – but what kind of man would be willing to spend his last few seconds of life killing himself to hurt his enemies, over and over and over again ?

It didn't matter, I decided. After tonight, Oni Lee wouldn't kill anyone else if I had anything to say about it.

I slammed my cane into the ground, and called upon the shadows once more. Having done it once by accident, I found that I could now do it more freely : black tendrils erupted from the ground and moved according to my will, forcing Oni Lee to teleport again and again, and his clones kept trying to detonate their grenades. After the first few detonations, I got the hang of wrapping my tentacles around their hands to stop them from pulling the pins, but that didn't stop the original from continuing to move around.

He could have escaped just as easily as I could have, but it seemed that, for all his faults, he was loyal to his employer, and didn't want to abandon Lung. He also couldn't go after Lasombra's main body, both because my reflexes were faster than the delay on his teleportation and because now that Lung was unconscious, his power had turned off, returning him to a normal man, just as vulnerable to a grenade's collateral damage as anyone else.

After less than a minute of this, the street was all but filled with writhing tentacles lashing out at the empty air, which thankfully didn't affect my supernatural perceptions in any way, but did seem to affect Oni Lee's, as his jumps became shorter and shorter.

He needs line of sight, I realized. He can only teleport somewhere he can see : that's why he's always on the rooftops.

Encouraged by that realization, I redoubled my efforts, until finally, I managed to catch the teleporting killer. The sickening sound of bones being pulverized echoed across the street as my shadows tightened around his arms and legs. He screamed in agony as I withdrew my grip, and fell, unable to remain standing with each of his legs' bones in several pieces. He could still teleport, but didn't : after all, there was nowhere he could go, even if he managed it through the pain.

Silence descended, broken only by the pained groans of the two parahumans at my feet and the sound of approaching sirens. Someone must have called the cops : the fight hadn't exactly been discreet.

In the windows of the brothel, I saw several women looking in my direction, peeking out between the wooden planks boarding them up. They flinched back as my face turned toward them, but didn't try to hide, which was good enough for me.

I could also hear panicked voices, as the remaining gang members I hadn't knocked out before stumbling into Lung fled. I considered going after them, but decided that keeping watch on the two unconscious villains was more important. Also, if I'd felt tired after fighting Lung, taking down Oni Lee had exhausted me even more. Maintaining my projection was becoming more and more difficult : my train of thought kept slipping away from me, and I had to force myself to remain focused, which felt very much like trying to stay awake despite being both tired and comfortable in bed.

"Hello, Lasombra," said someone nearby, whom I hadn't heard approaching.

I turned toward the voice, and found a man in a red suit with racing stripes meeting on his chest in a V-shape.

Brockton Bay's very own speedster had arrived. Good. Now, I needed to explain things to him, make sure that the women in the brothel would be taken care of, and not make a fool of myself in front of one of my childhood heroes – and all that before succumbing to exhaustion and losing my projection.

"VELOCITY."

Robin suppressed a shiver as the other cape spoke his hero name. Armsmaster had warned them that Lasombra's voice was disturbing, and anything which troubled the Protectorate leader wasn't to be underestimated, but it had still caught him by surprise. Even though Lasombra was faceless, the human instinct was to expect voices to come from the direction of the speaker, not from seemingly every shadow around them at the same time.

The speedster had rushed across the city as fast as he could once console had informed him that Lung was fighting. He'd expected to arrive to a desolate wasteland where he would use his speed to find people needing rescue, not … well, the street was still a desolate wasteland, with molten asphalt, a trench that ran for several meters, and damage consistent with the grenades Oni Lee was known to use.

But there were only two bodies laying on the ground, and neither of them were dead or dying that Robin could see. Furthermore, instead of the sight of whatever poor bastard had gotten on Lung's bad side (not that he had any other) burned to a crisp on the pavement, instead, both ABB's capes were laying on the ground at the feet of the new parahuman the Protectorate capes had received a briefing on a few days before.

It was difficult not to feel intimidated at the sight of the faceless man in a black suit that looked like it was cut from the night sky itself, casually resting on a cane as he towered over his defeated foes. But Robin was determined to stay professional.

"That's Lung and Oni Lee, right ?" he said, making a show of looking at the two. "Wow. You took them both down on your own ?"

"YES."

Robin suppressed a flinch. "Uh, any particular reason you went after them ? You knew they are very dangerous, right ?"

Lasombra turned and pointed his cane at the building with a broken window.

"INNOCENTS," he said. A few seconds later, once the echoes of his unnatural voice had stopped, he added : "RESCUE."

"Ah, I see," Robin replied nervously, fairly certain he knew what was inside the building. The ABB had a reputation for certain activities, after all. "You want us to handle taking care of the aftermath ?"

Lasombra nodded.

"Well, the Protectorate is always happy to help out a fellow hero, especially when it involves doing our job in the first place." He was not babbling, thank you very much. "You, uh, you are a hero, right ?"

Lasombra cocked his head to the side as if confused, before nodding.

"Oh, good," Robin sighed in relief. "Sorry, it's just that your look is … kinda intimidating, you know ?"

Again, Lasombra cocked his head to the side, as if not understanding Robin's point. He was almost sure the Changer (which Lasombra had to be, otherwise he'd have been outed by now) was mocking him, but decided not to mention it aloud.

There was another thing the hero needed to mention if he didn't want to deal with the Director's passive-aggressive ribbing for the next week, so he gathered his courage and asked :

"I know Armsmaster already made the offer, but are you sure you aren't interested in joining the Protectorate ? We could use someone with your skills in this city, and being alone is dangerous, especially in this town. You could do a lot more good with other people having your back."

Lasombra stared at him (or at least kept his head in his direction : it was hard to say for sure, what with the lack of visible eyes) for a long moment. Then he shook his head, and before the hero had time to say anything else, began to sink into the pool of shadows that had formed at his feet.

In the blink of an eye, he was gone. Briefly, Robin activated his power and did a quick check of the building, top to bottom – his power was great for reconnaissance. Within a couple of seconds, he was done and was back keeping watch on the two capes laying in the street. The ABB thugs would keep until help arrived, and Velocity wasn't qualified to help the traumatized women in the building who'd just been liberated from sexual slavery by Lasombra's intervention.

With the terrifying cape departed, people started to come out of the buildings. They kept their distance from the hero and the two unconscious villains, but Robin saw more than one mobile phone, and knew that by dawn, the pictures of him standing over the comatose forms of Lung and Oni Lee would be all over the Internet. Hopefully the truth of what had happened would accompany them, because after tonight, Velocity most definitely didn't want Lasombra to think he'd stolen his glory.

He was fast, sure, but Oni Lee was a teleporter, and clearly that hadn't helped him against Lasombra.

"Console, this is Velocity," he called out over the radio. "I've got Lung and Oni Lee here, unconscious, and a building full of ex-ABB sex slaves who need rescuing and ABB goons with various levels of non life-threatening injuries who need arresting."

"This is Armsmaster," the reply came at once. "Velocity, please confirm that Lung is out of action."

"Confirmed. He looks pretty beaten up, too, and it looks like … yes, Oni Lee's got all his limbs broken. I think Lasombra punched Lung out, and Oni Lee passed out from the pain."

"I have been working on a tranquillizer that should keep Lung asleep if injected while he isn't in his ramped-up state," said Armsmaster. "A bit earlier for field testing than I'd like, but it should do. Do you have eyes on Lasombra ?"

"Not anymore, I'm afraid. He bailed after I gave him the pitch about joining, same as he did with you."

"Unfortunate, but predictable," Director Piggot's voice cut into the discussion. "This night is still a great victory for us, or at least it will be once we've secured the two ABB parahumans. The BBPD has been informed : they and several ambulances are on their way to the scene."

"Velocity, hold position until I arrive," ordered Armsmaster. "I'm only a couple of minutes out, and Miss Militia is ten minutes behind me."

"Copy," replied Velocity.

It was hard to tell through the filter of the Protectorate leader's armor and the radio's signal interference, but Velocity knew Armsmaster well enough to hear the current of frustration underneath his words. He understood it : after years of fighting the gangs and only barely managing to maintain the status quo, having some newcomer take out the most powerful parahuman in the city was a blow to his pride as well. But honestly, at this point, he would take all the miracles he could get. God knew Brockton Bay, and Earth Bet in general, could use some.

He just hoped Lasombra wouldn't let his victory tonight go to his head. That was how far too many promising capes got killed. Lung, for all his power, had been a brute, apparently without any ambition beyond maintaining his petty kingdom in the Bay. The Empire, on the other hand, were far more vicious in their approach to unaligned capes.

He also hoped that Armsmaster would hurry up, because he didn't want to be on the scene if Lung woke up before that. Fortunately, it wasn't long before he began to hear the noise of a familiar bike approaching at a speed only permissible within city limits thanks to the Tinker-grade guidance systems which helped keep its pilot from crashing into anything he didn't want to (and even then, Robin had seen the paperwork required, and been glad that his power meant he didn't need to do it).

AN : Not quite satisfied with that fight scene, but then, these have always been a weakness of my writing. Hopefully this story will give me more opportunities to practice.

Despite that, I'm still having a blast writing this story, praise the Muse. We have reached the end of the well-defined section of my outline for this story. From this point on, I have a direction and a series of stops along the way, but the details are very much up in the air. So, if you have suggestions for things you would like to see, now is the time to share them.

One important thing to note is that Taylor's interpretation of her abilities is wrong. She has no idea of just how powerful she is as the heir (or usurper, depending on your perspective) of the Lasombra Antediluvian. But she is interpreting what she remembers doing while unconscious through the lens of Parahuman powers (that bit was inspired by Path to Munchies, where Taylor gets a copy of Path to Victory, but due to circumstances, ends up believing it can only work when she uses it to get pastries - yes, I know, but it's a good story, check it out).

To shamelessly steal and butcher a metaphor from the Dresden Files, if Taylor's inherited power is a passenger jet, right now, she has figured out how to turn on the engines while staying on the landing strip in order to frighten away birds. It's not what the plane was made for, but it's something it can do.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and look forward to your thoughts and comments.

Zahariel out.